I can't possibly remember when was this. Could have been two-three years before.
Veca and her husband are building a house in a neighboring village. Building is not a proper word, they're making a prefab. Which is what we meant to do, but it requires too much money upfront, which we couldn't possibly have. Her husband, though, had the means to put that together, and her school psychologist's salary was probably decent enough.
The house was already put up, with roof, doors and walls, that's what the factory personnel do for you (now whether it was Marles or by those guys from Maglaj, who knows), they took upon themselves to do the inner plating - plasterboards etc. This time they gathered a moba for ceiling plasterboards. I've later seen a majstor who could do that on his own, but it was much more fun to do it in a group. Requires about three guys, one lifts and passes the board to the guy on the ladder, he moves it into the exact position, third guy props it with a T-shaped tool (plain slats) while it gets screwed in enough places. The process is rather fast and we did the whole house in just a couple of hours. I think there were no partition walls yet, the easier.
The main reason I don't remember the when, not even the year, is that it was a fully novemberish, morose and foggy weather, and the world literally ended two houses away cityside. In the other direction there was nothing, the street was just being extended. Extension being impossible in the city, give the next village, within bicycle range.
The trouble was with the city growing with neither the housing following the growth - Bagljaš and 25. maj were built and that was it, it covered the few years worth of the backlog of needs - nor were new construction sites opened. The common solution was wild construction, like we did, which will get legalized sooner or later. The city simply didn't follow the demand, didn't open new streets, equip new building sites with infrastructure, the expansion wasn't even in the plans, we shaped the streets ourselves, along the previous field borders.
I don't remember who was there, just that I knew the most, from their circle of friends. Maybe Pali, maybe Đoka Vojinović. No idea.
The regular occurrence in mašinska, every year, was a few students who had problems not just with fractions or decimals, but with times table. The typical dialog would begin with 9x8 being 64 for him. Okay, what's 8x8 then? 48. And 6x8? 32. And 4x8? Aaaah yes, that's 32. Then 6x8? 48. Down to known, then back up until he remembers. And then „I'm not failing you on this for one reason alone, how you managed to reach third grade without knowing this, kudos to your skills“.
Told that in the staff room to a machine engineer colleague, and he confirmed that he likewise had the same kind of problem, with a guy not knowing what a „kolenasto vratilo“ [kneed turner, aka transaxle] was... then asked him which river flows under the Sava bridge, and the guy says „Danube“.
This is where I readily used Riblja čorba as a pedagogical tool. Whenever any of the students began the same old „but professor what good is that for us, why are we learning this“, I'd say „special homework, analysis of the song 'how nice it is to be stupid', with understanding“.
21-VIII-2024 - 17-XI-2025